buried deep within there's a human
by imperfectandchaotic
Summary: [8th in the SDYG series] In that moment, gone is her speed and agility and inhuman reflexes. She is just a girl about to fall into a lake; Caroline imagines the darkness of the water swallowing her up and wonders what it would be like to simply sink down to the bottom and stay there forever. But Klaus is there.


**buried deep within there's a human**

**Disclaimer: **still nothing.

**Notes:** because despite all the klaroline we've had over the past few months, nothing has gotten my head spinning like the image of Caroline flinching away from Klaus when he returns to Mystic Falls.

* * *

On bad nights, she has bad dreams.

They never seem to make much sense, nor can she follow them very well, but somehow in the end it's always dark and she's always running from something nipping at her heels.

Last night it was Klaus, laughing as he flashed into her path and drove another stake into her chest.

Caroline wakes up with a scream stuck in her throat.

—

She keeps checking on her mom, even now three nights later as she steals out of the house - as though she can tell her mother from an evil shade of her by the steady rhythm of her breathing as she sleeps.

Doing it just makes her feel better, so Caroline keeps peering into her mother's room, standing there for a full minute before going back to the warmth of her own bed.

But she's not going back to sleep tonight.

—

She doesn't make a conscious decision to head for the lake and the solitude of the dock, but somehow that's how it always happens with this place. The worn wood is still warm from the light of the day; fireflies flit out and welcome the beginning of summer.

Caroline's been sitting for at least twenty minutes before her muscles begin to relax. She feels safer here, even alone in the dark with only the fireflies and swaying cattails to keep her company. Even the memories are better—fruitless fishing trips and the realization that someone seemed to care so much, even if she didn't want him to.

However, try as she might, Caroline cannot extinguish the phantoms of her fear.

_Well that's just it, isn't it? I never had any intention of moving on._

_The truth is I've tried to stop thinking about you. And I can't._

_Come to New Orleans._

_What are you afraid of?_

She has to credit Silas, in a very small, removed space in her mind. He had her fooled; she was truly convinced that this was something the true Klaus would ask of her, that she would someday have to face the apparent true depth of his feelings for her.

Even the challenge—_wouldn't it be more accurate to say you're afraid of yourself?_—hits a bit too close to home. Caroline does fear herself, sometimes. She fears her strength and her speed and the burn in her gut that never seems to be quenched no matter how many blood bags she inhales; she fears the overwhelming waves of sadness and rage and terror that can be so crippling now.

She fears the way Klaus keeps pulling, and the way she lets herself be pulled.

But what stings Caroline the most, even more than the pain of a stake in her chest, is the cold realization that her deepest, most brutal truth—her fear of Klaus—was not, in fact, shared with the Original himself, but the ruthless and evil Silas.

Gone is the relief of that long-withheld admission, and in its stead is a fear that eclipses even that of the Original hybrid. Silas had wrenched the most closed parts of herself out for his own twisted enjoyment, and now has the perfect ammunition to use against her.

All this is without mentioning the idea of losing her mother, which is a terror that Carline could barely function against three nights ago on the floor of their living room.

_If Silas can make you, of all people, believe that you're dying, what can he do to the rest of us?_

She supposes grimly that she has her answer.

Caroline is too attached to what grounds her humanity; her mother is the very core of what keeps her emotion alive in spite of the unfeeling predator who lurks forever beneath her skin. It makes her far too vulnerable, insists the too-pragmatic part of her brain, but Caroline has always been lead by her heart, in spite of her head's best efforts.

If Caroline is being honest with herself, it is also the reason she has somehow yet to give up on Klaus and abandon him to face his demons alone. Everyone and their mother seems to realize he deserves it. And yet despite their fights over the witches and during Silas' torment of Klaus, Caroline has come to recognize the signs of Klaus lashing out against her.

She knows, deep down, he still cares, even if he might insist otherwise.

And even if she does the same.

She should not take advantage of course, she thinks wryly, considering the prom dress still hanging in her room. But even now, every interaction seems shadowed by the edge of a cliff, and Caroline is afraid to fall, let alone of what it will mean if she does.

—

He calls and she almost doesn't answer.

Caroline hasn't listened to his voicemail yet. She's not sure she'll ever pluck up the courage to hear what he wanted to say to her when they were nearly a thousand miles apart.

"What exactly is gumbo, anyway?"

A beat.

_"Where are you?"_

He sounds so urgent that her quip falls flat. Caroline wrinkles her nose. "Not in New Orleans? Why? Aren't—"

_"I'm standing next to your car on a dirt road and you are nowhere to be found."_

"What?" Caroline leaps to her feet, turning in an instinctive circle, but Klaus—or Silas—hasn't magically appeared. Yet. "What are you talking about? You're in—"

_"Not at the moment, love."_

She swallows. Silas never called her that, but she's learned enough to realize that there is truly no way of knowing.

"I—I'm fine, I'm just—I'm just clearing my head." Caroline presses her lips together. Panic is beginning to rise in her chest, pressing painfully.

"Haven't we talked about wandering alone at night?"

—

She whirls around again to find Klaus at the very edge of the almost hidden path, his phone pressed against his ear, a smirk lining his lips.

The panic presses harder.

Is this what they've been reduced to? she wonders, her quivering at the sight of him?

"What are you doing here?" Caroline demands, wincing at the unnatural pitch of her voice. "I thought you had some big problem in New Orleans."

Klaus' smile fades a little as he steps onto the dock, tilting his head. "Nothing that can't keep," he says. "You don't seem very thrilled to see me." Klaus feigns a casualness that even Caroline can see through.

She grasps for something to say. "This is my spot," is what comes out, and Caroline is suddenly glad for the dark so he can't see her flush.

His smile returns. "Is it now?"

Klaus has stopped advancing, hands in his pockets. Familiarity pricks at the edges of Caroline's focus, but she pushes back against it.

"Did you come looking for me?" she asks, wracking her brain desperately for some way to tell. "How did you know I was here?"

The Original narrows his eyes. "On my way into town I saw your car…" he trails off, frowning again. "Are you alright, Caroline?"

"I—" If she doesn't look at him, can he get into her head?

Panic is making her stupid.

"Caroline—"

"Don't." She backs away as he steps forward, apparent concern lighting his eyes. "Please—"

"Hey." Klaus reaches for her arm and Caroline shrinks back. Memories flash too quickly in her mind's eye—Klaus smoothing her hair back as she sank her teeth into his arm, Silas' hands holding it up as he threatened her, fighting over the witches, feeling the stake sink between her ribs.

Klaus.

/ Silas.

Klaus.

/ Silas.

_You. I'm afraid of you._

"What's—" Klaus is still reaching for her, confusion and what looks a little too much like hurt in his eyes and the downturn of his mouth.

And then Caroline's foot lands on nothing as she slips against the edge of the dock.

—

A gasp escapes without her consent and Caroline forgets all about her vampirism.

In that moment, gone is her speed and agility and inhuman reflexes. She is just a girl about to fall into a lake; Caroline imagines the darkness of the water swallowing her up and wonders what it would be like to simply sink down to the bottom and stay there forever.

But Klaus is there.

Klaus is there to blur forward and yank her back, one arm around her waist and the other hand with an iron grip on her jacket. They stumble backwards but he clearly has his head, because they don't fall. It's not until Klaus catches her gaze with his own wide-eyed expression that Caroline realizes she's clutching at the fabric of his coat so hard her hands tremble

(sun. spice. earth—

_safe_).

"Easy love," Klaus says, and there is an affection there so warm and familiar that Caroline suddenly feels tears burn in her eyes.

"Hey…" Klaus' hand is reaching up towards her face, but she shakes her head and he stops.

"What did we do in my kitchen that night after the ball?" she blurts, digging up memories she's tried to shut out for so long, and judging by the look on Klaus' face, so has he.

"What happe—"

_"Please."_ Caroline can feel the begging inflection in her throat and it burns.

She watches Klaus' Adam's Apple bob as he swallows.

"We _slow danced,_" he says, drawing the words out as though he still finds them as amusing as he did last year. But then the moment is gone as Klaus' eyes darken. His grip tightens on her waist and the urge to rip herself away from him is so great that Caroline feels like it will choke her.

"Did Silas—"

He doesn't get a chance to ask the question properly before a sob is ripping out of her throat. There is a dawning in Klaus' eyes as he releases his grip and Caroline is left to curl into herself as if that could protect her admittedly fragile state of mind. She sinks down to her knees, gasping as she pushes back tears.

"He wanted to scare me," she gets out in a whisper, somehow able to look Klaus in the eye and finding the strangest blend of fury and horror there. Her stomach twists. "He chose you."

Klaus actually _flinches_ but it's too late to take it back and Caroline tastes something awful and bitter in her mouth.

"He hurt me." Getting the words out is like ripping bullets from her skin. "He hurt my mom. He fooled me, she almost—"

There is a something far too akin to compassion in Klaus' eyes and that's just _it._ Caroline crumples even further onto the dock, tears splashing between beams into the lake water below.

"Caroline..." There is a small thud as Klaus kneels in front of her, lifting one hand as if to touch her but thinking better of it at the last moment and letting it fall back to his side. "I'm—I'm sorry."

Her head snaps up.

If there was ever a moment in which she doubted this were the real Klaus, it would be this one.

There is something too open about Klaus' expression, too imploring and too vulnerable. She sees the trembling man who'd grabbed her hand when she'd freed him of Silas' grasp, and that is probably the most frightening version of all.

"It's _me,"_ he says, almost beseeching, and his hand inches forward until his fingers brush hers and go no further. "I promise."

After a very long moment, Caroline nods.

The tilt in Klaus' head is asking permission; Caroline closes her eyes and allows his fingertips to brush tear stains from her cheeks. Just once.

It feels like a caress.

—

When she opens them again, there is the barest of smiles coaxing at the corners of his mouth.

"Your spot?" he asks, and colour floods her face.

Caroline drops her gaze to pick at a dark groove in the wood. "Mine and my dad's." Her fingers curl into a fist of their own accord. "Before."

She takes a deep breath before looking up, only to find Klaus sitting up on the dock and leaning back on his palms, gazing across the water at the most courageous fireflies still bobbing among the tall grass. Dawn is coming and Caroline debates whether she wants it to erase the memory of this night from her most sacred of places.

"There are almost none left in New Orleans," he says, sounding strangely regretful. "Mystic Falls seems like the best place to call home."

Caroline doesn't know what to say to that, or even what it's supposed to mean. She thinks of what she'd promised her unconscious mother and decides they'd at least have to come back, sometimes.

It is home, after all.

"Caroline, I—" Klaus presses his lips together. Tension snaps her muscles taut. "Your mother. I would never—you have to know I…"

Seeing Klaus so repeatedly unsure is unsettling.

There is truly no way of knowing, Caroline reminds herself with a pang in her chest. Klaus has probably the worst track record with honesty and trust and yet she cannot shake the desire to give him hers. There is danger in every glance and every word between them, but sometimes Caroline is too weak to resist that glimmer of human hiding behind all his malice.

She nods.

Klaus gives her that almost smile again.

They sit on the dock in silence for a long time.

The tiny bird comes to roost inside her chest as the fireflies make way for the rising sun.

The following night, Caroline doesn't dream at all.

* * *

**Author's Note**: it's good to be back.

(also: If those Graduation stills are more empty promises I am going to fly to the episode director's house and punch him or her in the face).

Annie


End file.
